bulk priming question

[jaytoons]

Hey i'm about to bottle a batch of the mangrove jack robbers gold (golden ale) but i'm struggling to calculate how much sugar I need. I'm just going to be using table sugar since i dont have access to corn sugar.

Another question. Since I don't have two fermenters is it okay to bulk prime in the same fermenter and let it sit for say 30mins and give it a gentle stir?

I've used carbonation drops before and found that it over carbonated the beer and I don't want the same happening again.

Any other advice would be highly appreciated.

 

[CrookedFingers]

Hey jaytoons

find a priming calculator on line and enter in your sugar.
How many litres do you have ?
Personally i go about 180g for 23 L.
I used to pour straight into the primary fermenter and stir gently, its fine to do.

CF

 

[jaytoons]

its a 23L batch. Give or take a few test samples and clearing out some initial sediment itll probably be 21-22L. so just boil the table sugar with a little bit of water and tip straight in?

 

[CrookedFingers]

Yeah, I do 200ml of water.
I'm no expert dude, but you should be fine with 175-185g of white sugar.

 

[Crusty]

Hey i'm about to bottle a batch of the mangrove jack robbers gold (golden ale) but i'm struggling to calculate how much sugar I need. I'm just going to be using table sugar since i dont have access to corn sugar.

Another question. Since I don't have two fermenters is it okay to bulk prime in the same fermenter and let it sit for say 30mins and give it a gentle stir?

I've used carbonation drops before and found that it over carbonated the beer and I don't want the same happening again.

Any other advice would be highly appreciated.

I found this info pretty spot on.

Calculator

This too

So, using the calculator above, if I wanted to bulk prime 23lt of beer @20degC & get 2.5 vol/co2, using dextrose, I would need 151g of sugar. 1.5ml of hot water to each gm of sugar, I need 226.5ml of hot water to dissolve the sugar. There's some debate as to what figure you need to add to the beer temp column & it's supposed to be the hottest temp your beer reached during fermentation I think. For me, that would be 17degc using a temp controlled fridge. I listened to all the arguments on here about the best way to do it but in the end, I dissolved the sugar in the calculated amount of water, let it cool & added it to a bottling bucket that had a tap on it. Gravity fed the beer from the primary fermenter to the sugar solution which mixed it thoroughly in a whirl pooling motion. Carbonation was spot on IMO.

 

[manticle]

It depends on how fizzy you want it and how hot/cool your ferment was.

If bulk priming the primary, do you have anywhere cold you can keep it?

 

[jaytoons]

it fermented at approx 20-22degrees.

il give this a go using my primary fermenter and buy myself a bottling bucket for the next batch. il find corn sugar tomorrow and sort it out

thanks for your help Crusty

 

[manticle]

White sugar or corn/ dextrose won't make much difference for priming.

 

[Mardoo]

Manticle I've never quite understood how original ferment temp plays a role in subsequent carbonation fermentation. Can you explain or direct me to a reference?

 

[philmud]

I understand it to be the max temp the beer has reached post fermentation. The logic being that the warmer your beer is, the less CO2 will remain dissolved. The post fermentation part makes sense to me because while it's fermenting, it will continue to produce CO2 (though at diminishing levels I guess, so if peak temp is reached towards the end of fermentation, I suppose even a subsequent drop, cold crashing for example, wouldn't make any difference).

 

[manticle]

Manticle I've never quite understood how original ferment temp plays a role in subsequent carbonation fermentation. Can you explain or direct me to a reference?

It's the maximum temperature reached during AND post fermentation as (unless the beer or wort is under pressure), carbon dioxide will either be released or remain in solution. This occurs both during and after fermentation and depends on a number of factors such as atmospheric pressure and temperature.

If you keep fermentation temperatures within a steady range, conditioing/maturation temperatures cool and do diacetyl rests for lager, you'll be fairly safe calculating everything between 18-22 (and there's not a lot between them in terms of calculating priming sugar).

I used to think it was only after CO2 was no longer being produced but it can remain in solution when being produced so that is relevant as well.

OK - I've just checked a couple of articles. Both suggest to use the highest post fermentation temperature. This is what I thought for ages but was given some guidance from a brew who I respect highly that active fermentation was important as well.

The two articles that suggest post fermentation are here:

http://hbd.org/brewery/library/YPrimerMH.html

AND

here: http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/articles/article79.html

Just when you think you understand things.

One more: https://nationalhomebrew.com.au/brewers-library-beer-a-guide-to-bulk-priming

The circumstances where it's going to be most important are if

a: Your temperature fermenting and conditioning varies wildly
b: Your temperature is deliberately high (say Belgian Saison)
c: You temperature is deliberately low (say lager) and you don't do a diacetyl rest